An Investigation of the Impact of Working Memory Training on Third-Grade Students’ Memory Functioning, Reading Fluency, and Reading Comprehension

• In Event: Promising Scholarship in Education: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research

Abstract

Reading problems are one of the main educational obstacles experienced by students (Torgesen et al., 2001). A child’s reading skill at the end of the 3rd grade is able to predict whether he or she will graduate from high school (National Research Council, 1998). Furthermore, beginning in the 4th grade, classroom instruction typically shifts from a focus on basic reading skills to a focus on using reading skills to gain additional knowledge in other subjects (Biancarosa & Snow, 2004). Research conducted by the Children’s Reading Foundation suggests that students who are not reading at grade-level by the end of the 3rd grade cannot comprehend approximately half of the printed 4th-grade curriculum. Thus, it is important to explore any intervention that has the potential to enhance reading performance in 3rd-grade students.
There is evidence to suggest that working memory (WM), a mental processing system involved in the temporary storage and manipulation of limited amounts of information, is an important contributor to reading skill (de Jonge & de Jong, 1996). Measures of WM involve manipulating information or simultaneously performing distracting and/or interfering tasks while holding information in one’s mind. Prior research has shown that WM and reading tasks activate overlapping brain regions, particularly in the inferior frontal cortex, which suggest that strengthening one skill may strengthen the other. Thus, this study aims to: (1) examine the relationship between WM and reading skills; (2) investigate the effects of a WM training paradigm on the memory performance of third-graders; (3) examine the effects of WM training on third-grade students’ performance on common classroom measures of reading fluency and comprehension.
Participants will consist of 50 third-grade students who will be randomly placed in either the experimental or control group. Children in the experimental group play a WM-training computer game designed by Loosli et al. (2012) for 20 minutes/day, Monday-Friday, for 3 weeks. The three weeks of WM training are preceded and followed by pre-/post-tests. Controls play a non-memory enhancing computer game and take part in the pre-/post-testing at the same test-retest intervals as the experimental group. Digit Span Backward and an experimental 2-back task are used to assess WM. AIMSweb curriculum-based measures of reading fluency (R-CBM) and reading comprehension (MAZE) are used to assess reading skill. The Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test also is used as a measure of reading performance because of its similar format to high-stakes exams and alignment with the Common Core standards. Data collection was underway at the time of abstract submission. Preliminary results will be presented at the conference.

Author

• Sylvia Lee, Southern Illinois University - Carbondale